It's probably fair to say that this week was probably the closest I've got yet to finding a fairly mundane routine. I slept, cooked, ate, continued analysing the organisation, worked on redesigning BRIF's web site, watched DVD's, went shopping, and generally gave advice to those who asked for it (and a fair few who didn't). You see? With the possible exception of the DVD's I could just have described my Dad's week, and personally I don't find that too scary.

If I start with work I'm still finding it really interesting. In my previous jobs I've done similar sorts of audits or projects to understand an organisation's problems and recommend how to solve them. Sometimes, I've even helped implement some of the solutions but not too often sadly. Here it's a different kettle of fish because I'm having to design workshops and training courses to teach people not only new skills but also different ways of thinking. This week I've started thinking about how to structure a session I'll run in a month's time to show project staff that they can and must take charge of and solve their different problems (which they've already identified in the last workshop we did). Obviously I'm making this up as I go along, and I'm bound to get some of it spectacularly wrong, but by and large I'm pretty confident I can do this and am enjoying the challenge. Fingers crossed.

Remember me harping on about The West Wing last week? (Just for the record I finished watching the rest of season 1 this week and felt a little swindled by the way they left it up in the air but anyway...). Another thing I like remembering from previous jobs as I watch each episode is the team work, the camaradery between colleagues. VSO placements are almost always 1 person affairs with the foreigner working with local colleagues who by and large don't really know anything about or understand the volunteer's culture.

In November I attended a weekend away with other Management volunteers to share experiences and approaches, and a few of them complained about how their colleagues seemed to make no effort to understand their own culture and needs. At the time I found this a bit rich as I'm not sure people in the UK or the West in general make a huge effort to understand and integrate foreign colleagues and neighbours. Certainly that was my experience in France, but the cultural difference wasn't as big as here, and I quite liked being the odd one out as it enabled me to be different and not follow the herd all the time. That last point is certainly true here, but the cultural gap here is such that I'm beginning to see where my fellow volunteers were coming from.

What brought this on this week is that my boss and Rabi weren't around very much, which left me to work at my own pace on whatever I fancied. I enjoyed that, but there were times when I would have liked to have taken a break and just talked gibberish for a while with people who get it. Furthermore, I also get people wandering into the building and staring at me working from my door. I leave the door open as I prefer it that way, but some people see it as an invitation. I've now developed a very stern Paddington bear stare which I use to deter people from coming into my office and peering over my shoulder. The braver kids ask if they can come in, and I don't really have a good answer to say no so let them. Thursday night I had the office caretaker pull up a chair, sit next me and watch me work on a Word document. As spectator sports go it's not really thrilling stuff, even if I can do some pretty sharp document editing with shortcut keys.

The point is though that this would be so much more entertaining and enjoyable if I had a colleague I could laugh about this with. Actually, not being able to do that here is probably a blessing in disguise as I'm having to deal with it head on rather than mocking and ridiculing it along with the people doing it i.e. my fellow colleagues and neighbours. Rest assured that when I meet up with other volunteers over a few beers in Dhaka we vent our feelings about these and other issues. We get them out, laugh about them, share coping strategies (to use a very VSO term) and when that's done we're OK again. I've got just such a session planned for the first week of February so all is well.

I wrote the above on Friday morning and as if by magic a few hours later Habib said we were going to Thakurgaen to work with another NGO on a project proposal. The NGO in question is the one where Ann and Bjort are based (friends I went to Darjeeling with, remember?) so no sooner had I written about lacking like-minded colleagues that I was actually spending time with and doing some interesting work with exactly those sorts of people. Sometimes life deals you some good cards eh?

On the domestic front I've been spending way too much time in the kitchen this week. Habib's absence, combined with a lack of guests for work camps or training courses, means that ready-prepared meals have been in scarce supply. Generally speaking I quite like cooking when I have the time and access to ingredients. Therein lies the problem as ingredients are not readily available here, at least the food I like eating anyway. My choices are either doing some serious shopping in Dhaka next tme I'm there to stock up, or spend time with Habib's Mum to learn Bangladeshi cooking. I'll keep you posted...

One thing of interest did happen in the kitchen though. One morning, as I was clearing away my breakfast things, I noticed a small turd on the floor. When I say small I mean 3-4 cm long and 1/2 cm in diameter. Dothing my Hercule Poirot hat I began my investigation. Upon closer examination, and with much relief, I concluded that it wasn't mine. My limited knowledge of the animal kingdom told me that, generally speaking, an animal's faeces are proportional to its size. As such, a 3-4 cm turd pointed to a fairly large mammal having been in my kitchen and marked his territory. This wasn't good. I always keep the door to the kitchen locked preventing entry, and I would surely have noticed a creature of that size sneaking in while I was inside, but the material evidence contradicted all this. After checking the different nooks and crannies of the room I felt sure that the animal had not taken up residence, hence indicating it was an occasional visitor.

I was at a loss to explain it all and so called in local expertise in the shape of Rabi and our caretaker Jobar. Their quick appraisal of the situation confirmed my hypothesis about an occasional visitor of the rodent family, and they instantly suggested a culprit. They felt sure it was a creature known in these parts as a "chika", a rat-like animal that is rather flat and so able to slip under doors. Ah hah! Under the door, of course! As a result I now have 2 thick door mats wedged up against the bottom of my kitchen door when I'm not there in the hope that no more turds will materialise. After all, what could possibly get your day off to a worse start than finding that sort of thing between eating 2 pieces of toast?